A Somewhat Less Fatherly God

By Richard N. Ostling

WHILE POPES AND PRIESTS come and go, for ordinary Catholics the Mass remains the heart of spiritual stability. To many, the Second Vatican Council's 1963 decision to allow the Mass in common languages instead of Latin only rattled the foundations of the faith. Now an aftershock is about to hit Catholics in English-speaking countries. As a revision of the English Mass makes the rounds of bishops, a conservative group led by Roger Cardinal Mahony, 56, of Los Angeles, is already shooting down the proposed changes. Their complaint: the translation diminishes the Fatherhood of God, as well as the role of Mary and the priesthood, and makes needless alterations in the Lord's Prayer and other familiar texts.

The most contentious issue is the use of gender-neutral language. The translators render the Latin fratres as "brothers and sisters" and drop "man" when referring to the human race. (Already, the Vatican is allowing Masses in the U.S. to proclaim that Christ died "for all" rather than "all men.") They also stretch to avoid male pronouns referring to God, and sometimes delete "Son of God" as a designation for Jesus Christ. Mahony is especially adamant that all references to God as Father be retained. The problem is that the 1974 English translation often uses Father even where Pater does not occur in the Latin text. Cincinnati's Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, who chairs the bishops' board supervising the translation, contends that in the standard new Mass there are only four cases where Pater is not translated as Father.

Mahony also argues that the Lord's Prayer should not be altered lightly. "Ever since Vatican II, we have heard, 'Please, please don't start tampering with our prayers again.' We certainly should not do it without very wide consultation." One apparent concern is that the faithful will be upset by shifting to "sins" rather than "trespasses," and "save us from the time of trial" instead of "lead us not into temptation." Mahony says that when deeply ingrained liturgical phrases are dropped, "you have not just made a translation change -- you have now made it impossible for generations to pray together." The Cardinal also demands that Mary's Latin title, "Mother of God" be added in a Eucharistic prayer where it had been removed in the 1974 Mass, and believes the priesthood is undermined by changing a prayer for "all the clergy" to "all whom you call to your service."

The new translation is the work of experts on the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, which was established by the bishops of 11 English- speaking nations. Sister Kathleen Hughes, acting dean of Chicago's Catholic Theological Union, says that when she chaired a commission subcommittee, "we never told the authors they could not use Father, because that was Jesus' privileged name for God. But we said, Try to use a variety of metaphors for God to capture a broader and broader understanding." John Page, the commission's executive secretary, says that "our hope was not to eliminate words like Father and Son but to use them a little less, to find other titles and new ways of praying to God."

Jesuit Joseph Fessio, publisher of Ignatius Press and Catholic World Report, remarks that fellow conservatives have worried for years about "revisionist pressure groups operating on the new English translation for their own ends." When the Vatican first gave permission in 1963, parishes clamored for rituals in English. Its pedestrian style aside, the current English Mass was prepared before liturgists began to champion gender-inclusive language.

After working on the new translation since 1982, the liturgical commission sent bishops a 154-page booklet of proposals last April, asking them to % respond by June 1. Mahony missed that snap deadline, but in July he sent eight pages of complaints to Archbishop Pilarczyk. Mahony dispatched copies of his broadside to Vatican officials and several dozen like-minded bishops.

In the letter, which TIME has obtained from church sources in the western U.S., Mahony stated that he was "quite alarmed" over the prospect of a "seriously flawed" Mass. The occasional improvements, he said, are overshadowed by "many questionable poor translations and outright changes in meaning." He charged that the anonymous revisers were supposed to simply re- translate the Latin but strayed "far beyond" their mandate by altering rubrics and even theology.

Mahony wants a special conference where 30 to 40 bishops can review what he calls "problem sections." Without such surgery, opponents imply, the new Mass may fail to win the necessary approval from the bishops conferences in English-speaking nations -- and the Vatican, which must also give its blessing. Mahony's conservatism is in tune with headquarters, and Rome would doubtless be relieved if he and his allies succeed in their resistance. "These gender-sensitive issues always seem to start in the U.S., but the U.S. does not represent the entire church," says a Vatican official -- a view that may say more about the masculine insularity of the Holy See than about the merits of the proposed changes.

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Washington and Jordan Bonfante/Los Angeles